On July 30, 2022, Bloomberg did a compelling article titled, “Young US College Graduates Face Tougher Job Market Than Average.” The author, Alexandre Tanzi, writes, “Since the start of 2021, the unemployment rate for those age 22 to 27 with a bachelor’s degree or higher has surpassed the national average every single month, according to data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Friday. Last month, the gap stood at 0.6 percentage point.” What can enterprising individuals do in this crisis hour to make the desired impact? Meet Jonaed Iqbal.
Jonaed Iqbal is a product manager at NoDegree.com, an online career resource solution for people with no degree. Already intriguing? Well, hold on, let’s complete the introduction and then we will go into how he is making an impact at scale. So, besides being a successful career counselor, Jonaed is also a customer success manager at ACE Virtual Events, helping companies run engaging virtual events on Remo and a recruiter at NHP Talent Group based in New York, US.
Now, let’s not try your patience and dig into NoDegree.com. NoDegree is an online career resource solution for people without college degrees seeking great jobs. They also offer career, financial, and general life advice to navigate the hurdles and issues one faces throughout life. Jonaed Iqbal, based in New York, US, realized early on the scope of impact and thus designed this mentorship program to help many deserving people with no degree keen to pursue a career of their interest.
Today, Jonaed has developed a very strong network of professionals globally. Referring to someone on Linkedin invites a lot of scrutinies, but enter Jonaed, a Bangladeshi immigrant to the US in early childhood; he is making his community proud of his support through resume editing services that landed applicants with the US Big Tech and other reputable publicly listed digital business organizations such as Hubspot. His talks on career development, education as an everyday act of upskilling, and social media community development earned him the trust and confidence of his thriving Linkedin community.
It is one thing to talk about subjects if one is great at communication but not with subject matter depth. But Jonaed has not only established his subject matter expertise in career counseling and placement, but he also brings to the fore incredible stories of people who are making money without a college degree and sometimes without even completing high school. Often coaches and stars are afraid of sharing real stories of people to avoid offering unpaid attention and sometimes insecurity, but Jonaed does it with elan on The NoDegree Podcast – No Degree Success Stories for Job Searching, Careers, and Entrepreneurship!
The story of Faith McKinney transitioning from an introvert janitor to personal media and brand strategist; the story of Collin Castrina pivoting from $100/hr as a High School intern to $10k/mo before turning 21; and then the story of Lucas Bédout a dropout with undiagnosed mental illness now a thriving software engineer; are stories that will convince anyone to avoid the trap of getting into morbid tuition-fee based private universities, but rather be frugal and yet enjoy a fulfilling career!
Is this all a fantasy? We bet you not as a simple search will fetch the story of a Staff Engineer at Google (2011–present), Bruce Miller, who clarifies that big organizations like Google do not need a degree every time. To a question on Quora, “How can you get a job at Google without a degree?” he answers, “Yes, you can get any job you like at Google without a degree…You’ll need something to show why you are more qualified than the other 999 people applying for the same job. That might be work experience or some other accomplishments.” [sic]
What does this story finally bring us to? Jonaed Iqbal’s story is just the top of the iceberg of a whole community of enterprising and empathetic professionals who carve their careers around carving thriving careers for others. A community today is mostly a stable of captive buyers, where people are losing faith and conviction in the system. But when people like Jonaed Iqbal care and commit to impacting the lives of people with no degree, it is a moment of faith regaining!
